Women In The Media

Women are so caught up in letting the media control their lives and their nation that they don’t take the time to sit down and contemplate what the media is doing to them. Women are taught at a very young age that they should look a certain way in order to please men. Women have been persuaded to think that being natural is not good enough. Women have been shaped by the media to look and act a certain way. Women are mostly presented in the media as either sexual objects or stay-at-home-mothers when they present women in power, the appearance is not quite what you would call appropriate. There are three important facts I want to enlighten you with. Three shocking details about how the media has played a role in our American culture by telling women that beauty is everything. Nowadays, when I walk to my little sister’s school to pick her up, I see 6-10 year olds, wearing lipstick or lip gloss and shockingly mascara and makeup. They have such lovely skin and amazing complexions but yet isn’t good enough for them because they don’t feel like they meet the perfection of the people they see on TV. It’s shameful to just sit there and let the media control women physically and emotionally. In about 10 years, imagine how many products will be formulated by the media to “improve your looks”. Everyday I see new products on TV that supposedly make you more beautiful (and not to mention the price). Half of the products don’t even work and they end up making whatever you wanted to cover up, such as acne, worse because it clogs up your pores actually making the issue more problematic. I feel sorry for the mothers whose children never feel like they are perfect because they don’t quite look like their role model that they see on TV. I believe that the media should change the way women are portrayed. There has been documentation which divulges how women are exploited in the media; but nobody seem to comprehend it and even when they do, they ignore it. Fact number one: Its been proven by the article from the YWCA, Eliminating Racism ,Empowering Women published in 2007 that what we women become in our workplace is based on our looks. “Workers with below average looks tend to earn about 9% less money than those who are above average in appearance” . With women trying to look beautiful since they believe that their natural looks aren’t good enough, they go out and buy all these cosmetics to “improve” their appearance in order to keep their jobs. “ if a woman invested the average amount of money she spends on a monthly manicure-pedicure treatment ($50) into her retirement account every year for ten years, she would have almost $10,000 in her account at the end of that time” . What happened to “knowledge is power”?! Fact number two: think about how much money you spend a year on make-up and multiply that by how many years you’ve been using makeup. It a pretty surprising number, right? Did you know that “one full year of tuition and fees at an in state public college is equal to almost 5 years of saving $100 a month normally spent on cosmetics and beauty products; one year of fees and tuition is $6,185 and 5 years of beauty products savings is $6,423” facts proven by the YWCA research. How ridiculous is that? Imagine how many people would be enrolled in college if they weren’t so worried about being as perfect as what they see on TV. Fact number three: how many times have you seen a model and wished you looked as thin as her ? Most of the time, the model herself is not really that thin, the pictures are often photoshopped as you may know, to make them appear thinner. Women see models, and instantly feel as big at a whale. When they feel humongous they start doing exercise and then they realize that it’s too hard to achieve the perfection the media shows, and then they stop, then they end up gaining more weight from discouragement. According to the researchers of YWCA, 67% of women in the United States between the age of 25-45 are trying to lose weight. Have you ever recognized that whenever there is a commercial about a woman smoking, the women is usually very thin? Could this be because the media is trying to target women who feel that they can't lose weight? Even though we know that smoking is unhealthy and brings a lot of health problems, we are so caught-up in looking like the boney model we see on TV, that we don’t consider the harmful deeds that we are doing to ourselves. According to American Lung Association “ 90% of lung cancer deaths in the United States are caused by smoking” but 13% of women smoke just to lose weight according to the researchers of YWCA.

It's most women's dream is to get married to a man who truly loves them for who they are.This fantasy becomes hard when men are used to seeing a certain form of attraction on TV and want those kind of physical qualities on a woman they want to choose as their partner. Such as thin, blond, sexual . This also puts more pressure on women because they want to feel loved and want to be told they're beautiful. This sets up a competition between women about who looks the best and who guys are attracted to. In the same survey by the YWCA, “80% of the women interviewed said that they competed with women over physical appearance”. I know there will be hypocrites who will argue that make-up has been around for centuries even before the media was around. There are also people who are going to argue that there are also advertisements towards men just as there are advertisements towards women. I understand there are a lot of industries that produce make-up, or that provide a lot of weight loss products and if women stopped using these things the industries will lose lots of money; this will be difficult because there have been lots of jobs that have been lost already now that the economy is bad. Some people may even believe that advertisements do not control our nation or persuade us into doing and becoming some type of way.

I do believe that you can tell alot about a nation based on its advertisements. Right now it seems that we are a nation in which the men care more about a woman’s physical appearance rather than a woman’s knowledge and other important things they have to offer such as personalities. We are also viewed as a nation in which the women care all about pleasing men and not about taking control of the power that we women have been given. I remember once in my English class we were having a group discussion about whether women should have the same rights as men. One student in my class who was a 16 year-old male raised his hand and stated that he didn’t believe that women should have the same rights as men. My teacher asked him why and he stated that all women are good for is staying home and cooking. (I wonder where her got that idea from?). I asked him if he felt the same way towards his mother and he said that goes for her too and also he only loved his mother because she is a great cook. I was completely shocked about the fact that he would say something like that, especially towards his own mother. Also once in my school, as an assignment, a psychology teacher asked her female students not to wear makeup for a whole day as an experiment. More than half of the students couldn’t do it and it bothered some so much that they told their parents about it and the parents called the teacher to file a complaint. Just ONE day without make-up and they couldn’t do it? They have put it in their heads that they are not beautiful without make-up. The thing that bothered me the most was that they chose to get bad grades over sacrificing wearing make-up. If you're telling me that me that advertisements have no control over our emotions and actions, then in my in my opinion you are Ignorant. So I truly believe the media should change the way we women are portrayed and present the variety of strength, beauty and wisdom that we women share.

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